Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Steps to heaven

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been on holiday recently with my family; we visited a couple of places that I'd never been before, which is always exciting. One the places we went to was Montenegro, more specifically the town of Kotor. It was beautiful, a wonderful setting almost Fjord-like but with azure water instead of the icy grey of more Northern climes. We only spent a day there but it's a place I'd love to return to and explore a little more. The people were very friendly and the food was exceptional, fresh fish like you used to get in Greece and Spain 30 years ago (not the farmed-stock that you typically find now) and they even make their own wines. We had a flinty, nutty Chardonnay with lunch that could have been sprung from the soil of the Cote du Beaune itself, and cheap too.

One other thing we did while there was to climb the steps of the medieval fort that sits above the town; it seemed like a good idea at the time but by half way up we were all starting to regret it. The temperature was around 30 degrees centigrade and there were over 1000 steps, most of which were quite rough and uneven. Amusingly there were people stationed at 3-4 points up the hill selling bottled water; at the bottom it was 1 Euro, half way up it was 1.5 Euros and so on, finishing up at 2.5 Euros at the very top; it seems that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. The view from the top was spectacular (the photo shows the view from about half-way up) but I wouldn't advise doing the ascent in the heat of the midday sun like we did, unless you're mad, or an Englishman of course.